One of the greatest business scandals has carved a new way for business leaders in today 's market. Where there was once great pride, now there was none. The Smartest Guy in the Room is smart enough to know that he 's smarter than most people, but not quite smart enough to recognize when he encounters other people who are smarter. This documentary is entitled Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room for that very reason. Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and the rest of the executive members of Enron believed they were more intelligent than the rest of the world and tried to play above the rules in order to beat the system, while ultimately backfired.
Enron infamized the entire mark-to-market accounting …show more content…
Enron overpowered banks and accounting firms as well as Wall Street; the company became so powerful they started to convince others to play by their rules. Enron went completely unregulated and became a business that just wasn’t a business at all. Enron began as an energy company, but evolved into a business that relied almost solely on trading Enron stock. The first statistic shown in this documentary began with Enron stock at $42 a share in July of 1999, quickly advancing to $68 a share by January of 2000. The Performance Review Committee was a representation of Enron’s cutthroat mentality. It was all about employees using others to better themselves without any regard for others around them. Enron’s employees were going to do whatever it took to get ahead, no matter if they were hurting their peers, just like their employer. Enron wanted to go from the leading energy company to the world’s leading company. Enron wasn’t aiming to sell a product anymore; they just wanted to be the …show more content…
When people started digging deeper in response to the rising price of energy and rolling blackouts in California, Enron wasn’t able to answer the simple question about where their money was coming from, and that’s when it all started to unravel. Enron stock dropped to $54 a share by the summer of 2001, and then plummeted to $19 a share in October of 2001 and diminishing to 40¢ just prior to declaring bankruptcy. The Enron scandal had a ripple effect; it put many people out of a job. Businesses learn as a whole that everyone has to play by the regulated rules. Enron was selling a story that was fiction. The impact of Enron going down affected more than Enron itself; Banks, accounting firms, associated businesses, and employees all suffered a loss because of the lack of ethics and immorality of Enron’s